50 EA Games to Go Offline

GameSpy, founded in 1996, has announced that as of January 1, 2014, it will no longer be licensing its software. This has affected several game producers, including (but not limited to) EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Konami and Capcom. GameSpy was a third-party technology used by publishers and developers to host online services. Bought over by Gly from IGN in 2012, CEO Niccolo de Masi had said that GameSpy and its technology are “expected to help (them) drive higher monetization and lifetime value (…) from 2013 on”.

Bohemia CEO, in a forum, said that, “This is going to affect multiplayer in our games that use Gamespy for matchmaking, cd keys authentification and NAT traversal from Arma: Resistance to Arma 3. We are planning to introduce an alternative solution using Steam to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead and Arma 3 users. Other games will have more limited multiplayer experience with loss of server browser, CD key authentication and NAT traversal systems. That said, direct IP connection to servers should work even after GameSpy services are no longer available.”

EA Games – probably the most affected by GameSpy’s closure – said that no solution could be found due to “technical challenges”, and hence, all online services for EA games on the GameSpy platform will be closed.